The Comedian's "Economic Holocaust" ping list...
Today is a good day to die.
I didn't say for whom.
Posted on 01/30/2011 4:47:12 PM PST by DeaconBenjamin
Events have moved briskly since a Tunisian fruit vendor set fire to himself six weeks ago, and thereby lit the fuse that has detonated Egypt and threatens to topple the political order of the Maghreb, Yemen, and beyond.
As Al-Jazeera broadcasts authority crumbling in the cultural and political capital of the Arab world, exhilaration can turn quickly to foreboding.
Whatever the aspirations of those on the streets of Cairo, such uprisings are easy prey for tight-knit organizations – known in the revolutionary lexicon as Leninist vanguard parties.
In Egypt this means the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is a different kettle of fish from Iran’s Ayatollahs; and Turkey shows that an ‘Islamic leaning’ government can be part of the liberal world – though Turkish premier Erdogan once let slip that democracy was a tram “you ride until you arrive at your destination, then you step off."
The surge in global food prices since the summer – since Ben Bernanke signalled a fresh dollar blitz – is not the underlying cause of Arab revolt, any more than bad harvests in 1788 were the cause of the French Revolution.
Yet they are the trigger, and have set off a vicious circle. Vulnerable governments are scrambling to lock up world supplies of grain while they can. Algeria bought 800,000 tonnes of wheat last week, and Indonesia has ordered 800,000 tonnes of rice, both greatly exceeding their normal pace of purchases. Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Bangladesh, are trying to secure extra grain supplies.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said its global food index has surpassed the all-time high of 2008, both in nominal and real terms. The cereals index has risen 39pc in the last year, the oil and fats index 55pc.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
So this is really all about food?
From the article “ Yet they are the trigger”
My area of work is also affected by the food prices.
Most of the pork produced in Iowa that went to export ended up in Japan. Prices are high, but not keeping up with the prices for grain.
The poor starving freedom fighters are now chanting for the death of Israel.
***Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Bangladesh, are trying to secure extra grain supplies.****
Meanwhile the EPA is protecting a worthless fish rather than using the water to grow food in California’s central valley.
And Zimbabwe, formerly the bread basket of Africa, is still a basket case.
If we didn’t have food stamps here we would probably see this in our streets. As it is with Banana Ben’s printing causing inflation on food we may yet see it.
Yes, but there is always that newly declared hazmat spill danger: milk
“EPA: Milk=Oil”
By Paul Chesser on 6.15.10 @ 11:25AM
“This is not from The Onion:”
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/06/15/epa-milkoil
I just posted the same article. whoops.
And you need not go further than one of our stores on midnight at the end of the month. And it's real interesting to watch, about 11 p.m., customers start to come in and shop, fill their grocery basket with basic items, baby formula, milk, bread, eggs, and continue to shop and mill about the store until midnight, when ... government electronic benefits cards get activated and then the checkout starts and occurs. And our sales for those first few hours on the first of the month are substantially and significantly higher.
And if you really think about it, the only reason somebody gets out in the middle of the night and buys baby formula is that they need it, and they've been waiting for it. Otherwise, we are open 24 hours -- come at 5 a.m., come at 7 a.m., come at 10 a.m. But if you are there at midnight, you are there for a reason.
This is not the first time Walmart executives have pointed out the midnight electronic food stamp bread line. Last December, Walmart CFO Tom Schoewe was quoted making similar comments in "Midnight in the Food Stamp Economy," a definitive Reuters article on the subject by Nicole Maestri and Lisa Baertlein. Two years ago, Bill Simon's predecessor Eduardo Castro-Wright remarked upon the "disturbing" surge in sales of baby formula visible on the 1st and 15th of every month. Heck, 10 years ago, as Reuters admirably points out, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony released a song detailing the predictable surge in economic activity on the "1st of Tha Month." (However, it should be noted baby formula is not explicitly mentioned as one of the purchases most popular with the target demographic.)
I suppose they should look at the bright side it helps out obama’s favorite banker Jamie Demon :)
The More Americans That Go On Food Stamps The More Money JP Morgan Makes
indeed.
Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck made them change. Palin and Beck hate everyone.
Do you see all of the warning signs that are flashing all around you? These days it seems like there is more bad economic news in a single week than there used to be in an entire month. 2011 is already shaping up to be a very dark year for the world economy.
The price of food is shooting through the roof and we have already seen violent food riots in countries like Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia. World financial markets are becoming increasingly unstable as the sovereign debt crisis continues to get worse.
Meanwhile, the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits is up, foreclosures are up and poverty continues to spread like a plague throughout the United States.
What we are starting to see around the globe is a lot like the "stagflation" of the 1970s. All of the crazy money printing that has been going on is overheating prices for agricultural commodities and precious metals, but all of this new money is not doing much to help the average man or woman on the street.
Do you remember what the economy was like in America during the 70s? We had high unemployment and high inflation at the same time. It was horrible. Well, all the warning signs are there for a stagflation repeat. Unemployment is at epidemic levels and it isn't showing any signs of decreasing much any time soon.
Meanwhile, the crazy money printing that the Federal Reserve and other central banks have been doing is starting to cause significant inflation.
The price of oil is about to cross the 100 dollar a barrel mark and the UN is forecasting that the global price of food is going to increase by 30 percent by the end of the year.
So, yes, there are some really, really good reasons to be incredibly concerned about the global economy in 2011.
Meanwhile, the only solutions that our global leaders seem to be offering are more money printing, more government debt and more financial control by international organizations.
The truth is that we have a real mess on our hands. The following are 20 economic warning signs that should be of great concern to all of us....
#1 Over the past seven days, the price of wheat has risen by 11 percent as concerns about food shortages continue to grow around the world.
#2 The price of corn is up a staggering 94 percent since last June.
#3 The United Nations is projecting that the global price of food will increase by 30 percent in 2011.
#4 According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week to the highest level since last October.
#5 According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, of the 14 million Americans "officially" unemployed in December, 30% of them had been unemployed for one year or longer.
#6 Beginning in the month of March, the U.S. Postal Service will begin shutting down up to 2,000 post offices across the United States.
#7 In an absolutely stunning move, Standard & Poor's has downgraded Japanese government debt from AA to AA-.
#8 72 percent of the major metropolitan areas in the United States had more foreclosures in 2010 than they did in 2009.
#9 Approximately 5 million homeowners in the United States are at least two months behind on their mortgages, and it is being projected that over a million American families will be booted out of their homes this year alone.
#10 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system will run a deficit of 45 billion dollars this year. When the new payroll tax breaks are factored in, the projected "Social Security deficit" for this year swells to 130 billion dollars.
#11 The U.S. money supply has been rising at a pace that is absolutely unprecedented.
#12 Right now, money is flowing out of bonds at an absolutely staggering pace.
#13 The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the price of food increased 50 percent faster than the overall rate of inflation during 2010.
#14 According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, visits to soup kitchens are up 24 percent over the past year.
#15 During the last school year, almost half of all school children in the state of Illinois came from families that were considered to be "low-income".
#16 Those living in the town of Discovery Bay, California will soon not be permitted to use cash to pay for any public services. Could this be another disturbing step in the direction of a cashless society?
#17 French President Nicolas Sarkozy says that the IMF should be given the power to enforce new rules that would be designed to prevent "global economic imbalances" from happening.
#18 The U.S. government is currently borrowing about 40 cents of every single dollar that it spends.
#19 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. government will have the biggest budget deficit ever recorded (approximately 1.5 trillion dollars) this year.
#20 It is being projected that the U.S. national debt will increase by $150,000 per U.S. household between 2009 and 2021.
So is there any good news?
Well, yes there is.
U.S. Representative Ron Paul has introduced a new bill to audit the Federal Reserve. Let us hope that the move to audit the Fed fares better in the 112th Congress than it did in the 111th Congress. It would be wonderful if the American people could actually learn what has been going on inside the Fed all this time.
But mostly the news about the global economy is really bad. There have been some people that have been warning for decades that all of this money printing and all of this government debt would eventually catch up with us. Now we have almost reached the moment of reckoning that the doomsayers have been warning about for so long, and it is going to be really painful to go through it.
Thanks to the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, we have been living beyond our means for decades. When "times were good" it was not because either the Republicans or the Democrats were doing something right. The truth is that both political parties have been horribly addicted to government debt. The debt-fueled prosperity that our politicians purchased for us is starting to come to an end, and an economic implosion is coming that most Americans will never see coming.
But hopefully most of the readers of this article are much wiser than the average American. The warning signs are there. Now is the time to take action and get prepared.
Thank you for keeping me informed. However, every time I see one of your posts, I get agita/tsuris. It’s not you. It’s the circumstances and current events. Thanks again and buy stock in antacids. :)
Is it possible for you to elaborate and articulate how to be prepared? Thx.
A good place to start: Here's a link to The Survival Mom.
This is Freeper ChocChipcookie site.
You may pick up some ideas of what you should be preparing for here:
Anyone that interested in downloading my Preparedness Manual can do so at:
http://www.mediafire.com/?zx5772aa15x6xga
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